"28% of websites have Google Analytics –- pretty impressive, while 12% of the sites have AdSense. [...] 5% of websites have a Twitter link and 5% have a Facebook URL, yet only 2% have both a Twitter and a Facebook URL."

"Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself.

The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include 'search neutrality': the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance."

"Beijing-based Baidu dominates: According to Jennifer Li, Baidu's chief financial officer, Baidu's market share for search in China was about 77% in the third quarter, up from 75.6% in the second quarter. Google, she says, lost share in China, dropping to 17% in the third quarter, from about 19% in the second quarter."

"Is anyone else experiencing this? We are afraid to do anything. We are not adding ads. We are not taking advantage of the new stuff google is offering. We just delete ads as they drop in QS. We are paralyzed and slowly dieing. The only good news is - so many other advertisers have had their accounts closed that our ROI has gone up. [...]

Yes indeed the 'Black-Box' analogy is very appropriate. If they do not want us, Google should come out and say so. If we are creating 'poor landing pages' then help us by telling us what you do want. I'm sure part of the secretive nature is to prevent hackers/spammer/fraudulent sites from skating around Google, but there are many legitimate sites that still want to use Google. At this point, It all sucks."

"In other words, according to Google, United States state governments have literally handed over our public data to be held and managed by a private company which has well-publicized partnerships with other governments such as China. The data is physically stored in Google's buildings, on Google's servers, managed by Google's employees. This means Google now controls our government’s access to it's own data."

If you check the position of your website in Google's search results with IBP's ranking checker then you can now choose if IBP should also consider Google Maps and Google News results.

IBP enables you to choose whether you just want to check the regular website results or if you also want to include the local search and news results. You can download the trial here.

IBP can also check Google custom results or the regular Google results by automatically deleting the customization cookies.

Using current tools is very important for search engine optimization. Things that worked last year might not work today. IBP is always up-to-date with the latest algorithms of Google and all other major search engines.